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Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Undressing Dr. Manhattan.

13" high and out of scale with most other 1:6 scale figures, this is the DC Direct 13" Classic Dr. Manhattan figure, the figure that has me realizing that I'm not going to buy another DC Direct 13" Classic figure unless I see one for $5 or something ridiculous like that.

Manhattan comes dressed in his suit, but underneath he's wearing his superhero duds and that's how I want to display him. Which means I had to spend about an hour undressing him. Why an hour? Because his fricking shoes are stuck on there pretty tight. If it weren't a piece of plastic I'd use a shoe horn. Instead I used my finger. The tip of my finger was numb for five days after. So let's go over the process of undressing Dr. Manhattan.

1. Fully dressed.

Step 2. Remove the jacket to create Steampunk Manhattan.

Step 3. Remove vest to create Office Job Manhattan.

Step 4. Remove shirt and tie to create Romance Cover Manhattan... Actually I'm shocked that they've actually tied the tie onto him, no elastic band or clip on tie here. An actual Four in Hand knot. It made me a little reluctant to take it off, afraid I might undo the knot, which I wouldn't be able to retie without a lot of time, patience, and tweezers.

5. And here's where it got to be a pain in the ass. Removing those shoes. I had to go online and look at what other frustrated collectors did. They recommended heating the shoes with a hair dryer and then pulling them off. Still difficult but at least there was some give after doing that. I had to reheat them a few times before I could finally get the blasted things off. Had to untie the shoes too.

6. All so I could get him in the Superhero Dr. Manhattan style.

I admit that I ordered this guy online before I was fully informed about Alan Moore's complaint about DC and the Watchmen liscense. Now that I know, I feel kind of bad buying this guy and being part of the problem. So I'm never going to buy another bit of Watchmen merchandise ever again, unless it's super low discount. That way I know the retailer is losing money on it and won't be likely to buy Watchmen merch from DC again.